They could be up and running around the world within years, or within decades.

Quantum computing should one day surpass our classical, bit-based computers that still boil down to a mess of ones and zeroes, and yet the traditional machines can currently emulate the next big thing.

The future of the potentially game-changing technology was one of many topics up for discussion at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. Physicists from around the world have converged on the think tank for an alumni reunion and conference about the future of physics, including quantum computers, the search for life on other planets and the origins of the universe.

Quantum computing rests on the still-evolving field of quantum physics, which at its simplest can be described as an attempt to understand how certain subatomic particles both exist and don’t exist simultaneously. That concept is often described in terms of a cat, which is inside a box filled with poison gas. Because the cat was put inside the box alive, it’s both alive and dead until it’s proven to be one of the other — or at least according to Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935.

Quantum computing in turn, relies on “qubits” as opposed to traditional computer bits, which at their core are either ones or zeroes at any given times. Qubits are in theory both at once.

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A decade from now, we could solve a way to make these qubits an exponential leap forward in computing … or it will amount to nothing. Not unlike the archetypal cat, at this point we simply don’t know.

But companies around the world, from Google to IBM to Quantum Valley Investments in Waterloo, Ontario — one of BlackBerry co-founder Mike Lazaradis’s many quantum-related projects — are pouring millions, if not billions into what’s so often touted as the computer of the future.

Just this week a company called D-Wave touted a 1,000 qubit quantum computer in a press release, but it’s more of an emulation of what a quantum computing may one day do, said John Preskill after his lecture Monday at Perimeter.

“So far they don’t have a way of solving these problems which is faster than if you ran them on a traditional computer,” the California Institute of Technology theoretical physics professor said of D-Wave technology. “I would interpret cautiously anything they say about how they’ve achieved some kind of revolutionary technology.”

But it’s even hard to explain exactly what a quantum computer will look like, especially in layman’s terms. Preskill said he “can’t rule out” that our laptops and phones could one day be some type of quantum computer, but it’s more likely they will be like today’s supercomputers: large and used by researchers to parse large amounts of data.

The best way to think of them is in terms of reading a big book. Think of a traditional computer as reading one page at a time, in a sequence that makes sense. Well, a quantum book would have to be read all at once, simultaneously. It can’t be understood in any one order but as a multilayered, multifaceted whole.

“We think all the magic of a quantum computer comes from this property that we can achieve (with regular computers): these states where you can’t read out all the information at the same time, because that’s what makes it so hard to make a classical computer behave like a quantum computer,” Preskill said.

He hesitates to even hazard a guess when quantum computing may be in widespread use, even just in research, but said it could be within a decade, perhaps sooner if someone has a breakthrough we’re not aware of yet.

Quantum computing could one day crack the square roots of prime numbers — math currently used in most computer cryptography. It would be like the ultimate code breaker, the Enigma machine on crack and able to solve every encryption in existence.

But work is already underway to mitigate those effects before quantum computing is a reality.

We think all the magic of a quantum computer comes from this property that we can achieve (with regular computers): these states where you can’t read out all the information at the same time, because that’s what makes it so hard to make a classical computer behave like a quantum computer

Quantum computer could allow for biomedical scans so complex they’d be like an MRI but at the molecular level, Preskill said. They could allow for sensors that could accurately measure gravitational fields which could help prove quantum theory in a tautology that fits the paradox. It could map new molecules before they’re created, say for biodegradable plastics. And those are just the concepts he believes there’s already math to support.

Companies that sell the idea of quantum computing tout its abilities to parse the big data that’s increasingly running our world, or engage in the earliest forms of artificial intelligence called machine learning: a technology that could allow live translation of languages, a task currently too complex for traditional computers.

What will mark the first quantum computer? That too could be as hard to define as quantum theory is to prove.

But for Preskill there’s one threshold that’s as old as the concept of computing itself: speed. Quantum computers, like all processors before them, will set the bar by raising it and proving they can solve the tougher problems faster and more accurately than what we can today.

It’s all in theory, but its about as close to reality as Shrodinger’s cat is to life.

The quantum computer is the modern Moon shot. It distills cutting-edge science into a single challenge, beyond which lies a limitless universe.

But the dreamers chasing this goal — a computer that uses quantum mechanics to solve problems beyond the scope of classical computers, with unprecedented speed — were jolted awake by a bucket of cold water Thursday, as research showed Canada’s leading contribution to the field has so far failed to show its promise.

Handout/D-Wave

D-Wave Systems, a company in Burnaby, B.C., whose shareholders include the Canadian government, has sold devices it markets as quantum computers to the National Aeronautics & Space Administration, Google and Lockheed Martin, making it a major player in the predicted quantum revolution, rivalled only by BlackBerry billionaire Mike Lazaridis, who has made the quantum computer the key goal of his investment in Waterloo, Ont.’s “Quantum Valley.”

But a paper by Swiss and American scientists in the leading journal Science shows the D-Wave Two device does not calculate any faster than a classical computer.

“In the tests we’ve run, we have not seen that speed-up that we would expect from a quantum computer,” said lead author Matthias Troyer, a computational physics professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, Zurich, who ran the tests on the D-Wave device leased by Lockheed Martin and based at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

“To be useful, you need it to have speed-up. And so far we have not seen that. That doesn’t mean that it can’t exist.”

A classical computer calculates with bits, which can be set two ways: one or zero. A quantum computer, in theory, is a device that calculates with qubits, which are physical systems — sometimes etched into a chip of metal cooled to near absolute zero, or a gas held in place by a magnetic field, or a sliver of man-made diamond — that can be in multiple quantum states at the same time, known as superposition.

The qubits in D-Wave’s machine are superconducting rings of niobium with electric current flowing through them, creating an upward force if it goes one way, a downward force if it goes the other, with the potential for both simultaneously, and thus superposition, the hallmark of quantum computing.

The promise is massive. A quantum computer of just 30 qubits would exceed what classical computers can accurately model, and D-Wave’s device has more than 500. The problem is they last mere nanoseconds, decaying long before the computation is complete.

Handout/D-WaveD-Wave extolling some of the virtues of its quantum technology.

In this case, D-Wave’s qubits lasted about 10 nanoseconds, and the calculation Prof. Troyer tested takes 20 microseconds — 2,000 times as long.

“That’s why we don’t know how quantum they are,” he said. “They are quantum for a short time and then at some time they become more classical, and the question is just how much it needed.”

D-Wave’s co-founder and chairman was dismissive, saying the research might already be outdated and predicting an “astronomical” improvement in performance in a few years.

“Troyer’s comments are one snip in a continuum, one little piece of information,” said Haig Farris, a venture capitalist.

“If you go back to the start of computing in the ’50s, when they first commercialized the transistor, all the transistors could do in those days was run a tiny little clock. It took 50 years and a trillion dollars worth of expenditures to get the whole computing industry where it is today. So we’re a step along that way, and we’re very early stages. Whatever [Prof. Troyer] has to say a year or two from now will be irrelevant.”

Others were less optimistic.

The D-Wave strategy was to take a “shortcut” that has led to a dead end, or over a cliff, said Raymond Laflamme, executive director of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo.

“What D-Wave’s people have claimed is they can manipulate information with the rules of quantum mechanics and have a gain at doing this. What we see from the paper … is that no such gain has been seen up to now,” he said.

“That certainly puts on the table the question of how do we characterize that device, then. It seems that from that analysis, it is consistent with a device whose quantum behaviour doesn’t help for computation.”

Even a classical computer, like a laptop or a smartphone, has quantum properties, but they are so fleeting as to be irrelevant.

“I think that is what is happening here with the device that the people at D-Wave have,” Prof. Laflamme said.

The quantum revolution Mike Lazaridis expects is grand enough. Inventing the mythical quantum computer, which the BlackBerry billionaire has set as the primary goal of his massive investment in the southern Ontario technology hub known as Quantum Valley, could create a trillion-dollar market that Canada stands to dominate. He says the question is when, not if. The scientists say years, not decades.

But this is just the part he thinks he can predict.

“There is a quantum revolution coming, an industrial revolution,” he said. “It’s audacious.”

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Just as the challenge of a transcontinental phone call led to the invention of the transistor, and thus electronics and computing, he thinks quantum can do for Canada what silicon did for America.

Mr. Lazaridis founded the Perimeter Institute here in 1999 to develop theory, then the Institute for Quantum Computing in 2002 to do experiments, and now Quantum Valley Investments in 2013 to bring the science to market, now a decade ahead of schedule.

“Maybe we’ll find the quantum equivalent of a catalyst [a chemical agent that speeds reactions, useful in industry], that allows us to grow material,” he said. “What if you could make metals transparent?” Or suppose you could grow diamond, among the hardest materials known, as indeed researchers are doing — slowly, atom by atom — in a lab near his office on the northern campus of the University of Waterloo.

J.P. Moczulski for National PostA $100,000 quantum key cryptography computer is subject to hardware and software attack during an independent assessment being done on these devices currently used by governments and large corporations at The Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo.

“How would that change architecture?” he said. “How would that change bridge production?”

“A bridge of diamond,” he says, nodding to affirm the dream. “This is verging on science fiction and what I’m going to tell you is, even this is probably not crazy enough … In a sense [investing in quantum] was a bet, because you’re betting against the prevailing culture, the prevailing idea, the prevailing attitudes.”

Now, with progress, his quantum bet, measured in hundreds of millions, looks more like an investment.

“What you’re looking for is exponential growth,” he said. “Linear growth is boring. Anything you can predict is linear. What you really want is, you want to think about, well, you want to hope that no matter how wild your thinking is, it’s not wild enough.”

He said he is comfortable in this realm of uncertainty, putting a fortune on technology that has not been invented yet, barely dreamed, if at all.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “That’s the best part … The most boring thing in the world would be if we did all these experiments and we got nothing new, we just verified everything we predicted.”

“It’s more of an expectancy, as opposed to an uncertainty. The uncertainty is only in the sense that we just don’t know. But the expectancy is that it will be better than we can predict,” he said.

As the most mystical science, quantum mechanics is just the place for such visionary questing.

It arose a century ago from the discovery that, on the ultra-small scale of the atom, energy does not increase smoothly, but rather by little jumps, known as quanta. Wild results followed, including the strange properties of entanglement, which is parodied in the fable of Schroedinger’s Cat (who is both dead and alive); and superposition, in which one particle can be in many states at the same time, both up and down, here and there.

Mario Tama/Getty ImagesMike Lazaridis

This is possible because on the level of the single electron, matter looks less like ordinary stuff, and more like a web of probabilities, in which everything is more or less potential. Odd as it seems even to those who understand the math, particles at this scale act as waves, and vice versa. And nothing lasts very long, which represents one of the most daunting threats to Mr. Lazaridis’ grand vision, technically known as the problem of decoherence.

Basically, quantum computers fall apart the second you build them.

A quantum computer, in theory, is a device that calculates with qubits. A qubit is a physical system — sometimes etched into a chip of metal cooled to near absolute zero, or a gas held in place by a magnetic field, or even floating free in a liquid — that can be in multiple quantum states at the same time, known as superposition.

A computer of this sort could vastly exceed the power of classical computers, whose transistor bits are either on or off, one or zero, which places physical limits on the scope of their calculation.

But qubits are notoriously tricky to maintain. A team from Simon Fraser University, for example, got top billing last month in Science, a leading journal, for creating a single functioning room temperature qubit that lasted 39 minutes.

Something has to give before such things can come to wide use, but the promise is huge. A quantum computer of just 30 qubits would exceed what classical computers can accurately model.

IQC executive director Raymond Laflamme — the quantum scientist Mr. Lazaridis lured away from Los Alamos National Laboratory, famed in physics for his influence on the thinking of his teacher at Cambridge University, Stephen Hawking — predicts that within a few years his team will have built a true quantum computer of 50 to 100 qubits.

J.P. Moczulski for National PostA lot of low-tech tools are used in the various labs in The Quantum Nano Fabrication lab at The Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, Tuesday December, 2013.

He holds out a single qubit in the palm of his hand, a little wafer of etched aluminum-coated silicon. Beaming with pride, he offers another, a little piece of diamond created in his lab, with a deliberate imperfection — a qubit — built into its “rigid and perfect” structure of pure carbon.

Control these things on a large scale, he said, and the world will change, no less than when fire was tamed, or steam, or electricity.

He is skeptical of the claims of D-Wave, a British Columbia company that sold what it calls the world’s first quantum computer to Google and Lockheed Martin. Prof. Laflamme compared it to an opaque “black box,” and has been asking whether it behaves any differently, or even any faster, than a classical computer. “And nobody can give me the answer,” he said.

In any event, it represents just one of many current strategies in the global race, in which Canada is a favourite. Prof. Laflamme lists them, wondrously named widgets like atom traps, ion traps, and quantum dots.

As is obvious from a tour this week of the University of Waterloo’s Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum Nano Centre — a slick new building with high-tech clean rooms, ultra-sensitive optical equipment, cooling fridges that can approach absolute zero, and even a freestanding deep concrete foundation to eliminate natural tremors — Prof. Laflamme and his colleagues are tantalizingly close to a revolutionary breakthrough, but nothing has quite taken off.

J.P. Moczulski for National PostDECEMBER 3, 2013 A couple toy dinosaurs sit on a toolbox in the quantum cryptography lab at The Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, Tuesday December, 2013.

Here in Quantum Valley, they are gathered for the dawn, but the horizon is still dark.

Commercial applications, though rare, are slow to take shape. First is quantum cryptography, according to Steve MacLean, the astronaut and laser scientist who stepped down as head of the Canadian Space Agency to join IQC as an associate faculty member this year.

For example, in the parking lot of an IQC building on the edge of campus, a prototype satellite tracking device, the size of a toaster, lies under a tarp in the bed of a pickup truck, which drives around to test its reception. It is part of a security system, in which two quantum particles will be “entangled,” then beamed via satellite to different ends of the Earth, such that measuring one will instantly affect the other, so they become keys to literally uncrackable codes.

After that it will be quantum sensing, Mr. MacLean said, especially in medical imaging, exploiting the inherent fragility of quantum states to detect cancer, for example. Only later will the quantum computer, the grail at the end of this historic quest, ever be fully grasped.

By then, it might be all around us — in everyday technology like thermostats, personal computers, phones.

“My bet is that all these devices will be improved by going to the size of atoms and manipulating the quantum mechanics there.” said Prof. Laflamme. “I think they’ll be everywhere.”

J.P. Moczulski for National PostThe Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum Nano Centre at the University of Waterloo, Tuesday December, 2013.

“We will eat them,” he said, not as food, but medicine.

With such bold speculation from a scientist, it is easy to see why Mr. Lazaridis thinks, in hindsight, all our modern technology — even the BlackBerry that made so much of this financially possible — is going to look quaint.

“The important part is to realize that it wasn’t any different [a century ago]. Everyone then thought it couldn’t get any better,” Mr. Lazaridis said. “Everyone was amazed with the state of the art, you know. They had hot and cold running water, and an icebox. Maybe a few years later they had a radio. And life couldn’t get any better, right? And yet it did.”

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]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-quantum-computing-revolution-blackberry-billionaire-mike-lazaridis-is-betting-on-tech-that-hasnt-been-invented-yet/feed14stdNPPhotoAssignment ID: 00051102AJ.P. Moczulski for National PostMario Tama/Getty ImagesJ.P. Moczulski for National PostJ.P. Moczulski for National PostJ.P. Moczulski for National PostCanadian researchers take a sneak peek at Schrödinger’s Cat and a step toward a quantum computerhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-researchers-take-a-sneak-peek-at-schrodingers-cat-and-a-step-toward-a-quantum-computer
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-researchers-take-a-sneak-peek-at-schrodingers-cat-and-a-step-toward-a-quantum-computer#commentsMon, 04 Mar 2013 05:03:59 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=275812

Canadian researchers have succeeded in side-stepping an obstacle of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, a strange law of the quantum world that says precise measurement is impossible, because the act of measuring changes what you are trying to measure.

Their experiment in an Ottawa lab — in which they measured the polarization states of single light particles, called photons — is seen as a small step toward a quantum computer, a major goal of modern science.

“These results are the first direct measurements that are applicable to qubits — the fundamental unit of quantum information,” the authors write in Nature Photonics.

Regular computers represent data with ones and zeroes, called bits. But a quantum computer would use qubits, or quantum bits, which take advantage of the mysterious properties of matter on its smallest scale.

These include superposition, in which a qubit could be simultaneously one and zero, and entanglement, in which two qubits could remain connected even when they are physically far away.

By offering the prospect of an unbreakable code, or the ability to factor large numbers so fast that the best current code is easily cracked, quantum computing has lured massive research and investment.

BlackBerry billionaire Mike Lazaridis, for example, has invested millions in the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, and his recent hiring of the astronaut and former Canadian Space Agency head Steve MacLean to head up a new venture in applied quantum physics — the purpose is still mysterious, but definitely involves computing — has bolstered the area’s claim to the nickname “Quantum Valley.”

The new paper, by researchers at the University of Ottawa and the University of Rochester, is co-authored with Robert Boyd, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Quantum Nonlinear Optics.

Lead author Jeff Salvail, now a Master’s student at Simon Fraser University, described the experiment as sneaking a peek at Schrödinger’s Cat, one of the most baffling paradoxes of quantum theory.

It’s strange, but so fascinating

Invented in 1935 by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, the cat story was meant to criticize the strange notion that quantum particles can exist in multiple states at once — known as superposition — and until you actually make a direct observation, each possibility is equally true.

So imagine a cat in a box containing a vial of poison gas that is rigged to a device that detects the radioactive decay of a particle. If it decays, it will trip a switch that smashes the vial and the cat will die. If it does not decay, the cat will be alive.

According to quantum mechanics, until you actually look inside the box, both possibilities are true. The particle has both decayed and not decayed; the vial is both smashed and intact; and the cat is both alive and dead.

As yet unresolved, this paradox has inspired many efforts to explain when and how matter stops behaving according to quantum laws, as decaying atoms do, and starts behaving according to classical laws, as cats do.

“To completely determine a quantum state, which is described in general by complex numbers, one must perform multiple measurements on many identical copies of the system,” the authors write. “Directly measuring a quantum system relies on the technique of weak measurement: extracting so little information from a single measurement that the state does not collapse.”

“I can’t say that we’re getting around the Uncertainty limit, because within quantum mechanics there is no getting around it,” said Mr. Salvail.He cautioned that explaining such things in words risks “losing the subtleties that are captured in the mathematical expression” of the theory.

“We’ve kind of gone back and exploited the subtleties in the Uncertainty Principle,” he said. “It’s strange, but so fascinating.”